Bridges

Brooklyn Thorn and I met for the first time in third grade. It was nothing short of cataclysmic. I suppose it was inevitable for things to happen that way, like a clash of Titans maybe. After all, his parents named him Brooklyn, mine named me Dallas--yeah, I’m still working on forgiving them. Truth is, with names like that we could either be best friends or hate each other on sight.

We chose hate. At least he did. But believe me, I was happy to fall in line.

On that very first day we met on the playground. He was surrounded by his cronies, I was the new boy in town who only had one other scrappy not so popular kid named Jeffie to back me up (we met in class that morning and he offered me half of his Fruit Roll-Up at lunch. In my book that was friendship).

Brooklyn stood all close to me, like I was supposed to be intimidated by his hugeness. He clearly had never been to public school in Newark. Please. I just walked right up and got in his face, even if it was a few inches above mine. What did some kid from the butt crack of nowhere think he was going to do to me anyway?

“So you from Dallas, Dallas?” He asked with a sneer. Like I’d never heard that one before.

I rolled my eyes. “Jersey.”

“That right? Well, then you don’t belong here, Yank.”

I didn’t know what Yank meant at the time but it didn’t seem like anything good. I also had no idea what his problem was with me but I wasn’t going to let him get away with being a jerk. Years later I figured that it probably had something to do with my dad coming in and taking over as management for the local Honeypot Snack Cake factory instead of one of the local workers like, uh, Brooklyn’s dad for example. At the time I didn’t really care.

“I don’t want to be here either, Brooklyn.”

I made sure that his name sounded like an insult. He’d already pissed me off. Plus it was the truth. Sugarcreek, Texas was the last place I wanted to be. I missed my old friends and my backyard, I hated how the sun felt like it was boiling my brains, and I missed downtown being more than a block and a half of ugly old buildings (with no pizza decent place). It sucked the big one.

“If you want to leave so bad then why don’t you take your dumb dad and get out?”

That question was paired with a punch to the eye that came flying out of nowhere. It was my first and not a very strong one. But it took me by surprise--so much so that I didn’t manage to punch him back until he was halfway turned to strut away, victory in hand. My fist caught his jaw sideways on a half punch-half uppercut, and he reeled backward and sat hard on the cement of the playground.

“What’d you do that for?” He yelled at me. I noticed his lip was bleeding and he had his hand cupped around his jaw.

“You hit me first! What did you think I was going to do? Cry?”

“I don’t know. Run away like a yank. My dad says you’re all pansies.”

“Your dad doesn’t know shit!” It felt cool to swear. I knew my mom would ground me if she heard me talk like that. Good thing she wasn’t listening. Unfortunately the playground supervisor was. She’d walked over to see what the commotion was and found Brooklyn on the ground bleeding and me swearing up a storm and rubbing at my rapidly swelling eye.

“You two!” She yelled out. “Follow me.”

And that was the beginning. Enemies for life.